W. S. Merwin, 1927–2019

W. S. Merwin. We’re sad to report that W. S. Merwin, one of America’s finest poets, has died at age ninety-one. The recipient of nearly every literary award imaginable, Merwin was incredibly prolific over the course of his long career, and this shows in the amount of work he contributed to The Paris Review: thirty-six poems, a short story, an essay, selections from a travel journal, and an Art of Poetry interview. “The kind of writing that matters most to me is something you don’t learn about,” Merwin tells Edward Hirsch in his interview. “It’s constantly coming out of what I don’t know rather than what I do know. I find it as I go. In a sense, much that is learned is bound to be bad habits. You’re always beginning again.” Merwin’s first appearance in these pages was in the Winter 1955 issue, to which he contributed the poem “Sow.” Even in this early poem, published just three years after he won the prestigious Yale Younger Poets Prize, one can see the clarion language and careful curiosity about nature that define so much of his work. “There is an archipelago rising,” it begins. “Out of the green waters that, rippling / And swaying, are the oak tree’s shadow / In the afternoon wood.” But Merwin was more than a mere observer; he was an activist, too, and fought throughout his life to oppose war and direct attention to environmental issues. He lived for a long time in Hawaii, where he helped restore the land around… [Read full story]